Every day I experience life in the world of healthcare IT, supporting 3000 doctors, 18000 faculty, and 3 million patients. In this blog I record my experiences with infrastructure, applications, policies, management, and governance as well as muse on such topics such as reducing our carbon footprint, standardizing data in healthcare, and living life to its fullest.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Cool Technology of the Week

This week's cool technology is not about any specific hardware or software, but is about a trend.

Mobile technology for healthcare is fast replacing desktops and laptops in many settings.

As of this morning, there are 1600 iPhones and 300 iPads connected to the BIDMC network, using our administrative and clinical applications. These were all purchased by individual clinicians and staff to enhance their productivity. All we do centrally is provide the server components to access applications (web servers, citric, active synch) and enforce mobile device security polices.

Mobile devices for healthcare are becoming increasingly important at the bedside, in the home, and in hostile environments.

Some IT leaders consider mobile computing to be a burden and distraction - a wild west of client devices brought in by customers demanding new services. The reality is that CIOs should develop a mobile device strategy assuming that tablets, smartphones and laptops will replace desktops in many settings. By defining security policies and providing server side applications, IT organizations can become mobile device enablers and leverage the momentum created by users who are investing their own time and resources to make them work.

How do you address the security/accountability aspect of the mobile devices? You indicated that the iPads/iPhones were purchased by the individual users so they are likely to take better care and are accountable for the security of the device. However, if the devices are hospital owned, how would you ensure that these devices do not "disappear"?